1. Technical Field
Various embodiments of the present invention(s) relate to systems and methods for betting contests relating to sports matches and, in particular, relating to fantasy sports associated with sports matches.
2. Description of Related Art
Fantasy sports provide participants the ability to play in daily, weekly, quarterly, season-long and playoff fantasy leagues across various sports, including National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Hockey League (NHL). Generally, a fantasy sports league (hereafter, fantasy league) is established in connection with a particular real-world professional sports league (e.g., in the U.S., National Football League, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer), and participants in the fantasy league act as owners a fantasy sports team (hereafter, a fantasy team) that create and manage within the fantasy league. Each fantasy team is composed of real-world players, which are selected by the fantasy team owner from the real-world professional sports league (e.g., NFL, MLB, MLS, NHL, and the like), often regardless of their real-world team affiliations. Once a participant has selected a league, they select the real-world players (e.g., for NFL football, you may select one quarterback, one running back, two wide receivers, one tight end, and one kicker) from the available players in the selected league to be on the participant's fantasy team. Usually, the fantasy league season lasts for the length of the regular season of the real-world professional sports league to which it is associated. During the fantasy league season, the performance of the fantasy team is determined by the real-world performance (e.g., statistical performance, points scored, etc.) of the real-world players on the fantasy team. Since real-world performance of an individual real-world player corresponds to player activity during real-world sports matches, during the fantasy league season, fantasy team owners actively manage their respective fantasy team rosters to maximize the performance their respective fantasy teams derive from the real-world sports matches that occur during the real-world regular sports season. At the end of the fantasy league season, the fantasy teams may be ranked (e.g., based on their respective overall performances) and one or more fantasy team owners may be declared winners of the league.
Unfortunately, traditionally formatted fantasy sports leagues provide little or no opportunity for low-performing fantasy league participants to improve their overall standing once their fantasy team has fallen behind. It is common for fantasy league participants that are not performing too well during a fantasy sports season to lose interest as the fantasy league season progresses. Often, this leads to low-performing fantasy league participants reducing or ceasing their participation in the fantasy league's activities for the remainder of the fantasy league season.